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OBFS Website Redesign Project

The purpose of the OBFS Website Redesign Project is to create a new business and finance website that has the proper branding and visual elements consistent with the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and the updated University of Illinois System branding. The goal is to improve the user experience of finding critical information for the performance of financial responsibilities and increased efficiency.

The timeline of the new Business and Finance website redesign process. Phase one lasted from August 2020 to May 2021 and involved the assessment of the previous website. Phase two lasts from May 2021 to January 2024 and involves Design and Development, Topic-Based Navigation, and Content Review and Testing. The current state of the project is most of the way through the Topic-Based Navigation milestone. In the final milestone of Content Review and Testing, subject matter experts will be reviewing content to ensure it is easily accessible, and testing will be conducted on the Business and Finance news and the new website to eliminate bugs and ensure ease of use. The planned launch of the new Business and Finance website is January 2024.

Phase 1 (Complete)

The initial phase started in Spring 2021 and was an inventory gathering of website content to help audit, analyze, document and migrate content to the new website.

  • Content Inventory - The first effort initiated by the project team was to develop a complete and accurate inventory of the OBFS website to document all ownership of content on the site. A round of interviews was conducted with business and finance units that own content on the site.
    • After the interviews were completed, the inventory process began. This effort resulted in the documentation of over 1,300 webpages and connecting those pages with a specific unit that is the content owner.
  • Community Engagement (focus groups and surveys)
    • The project team developed and delivered a survey in Fall 2020 focused on the usability of the current site and users’ opinions of the site. The survey was also used as means to select representative samples of employees to participate in focus groups about the current site.
    • In the spring of 2021, the project team expanded the usability analysis effort to gather more information about issues users experience when using the existing site in order to develop our final design recommendations. The team began by creating and distributing a second survey focused on functionality based on user needs.

Phase 2 - Design and Development

This phase consists of validating the findings from Phase I and implementing user recommendations, based on multiple surveys and focus groups, into a design that will accommodate the content. The website design will have a user-friendly interface with easy to navigate menus and an intuitive search engine. In Phase 2 we plan to organize content by function, not by units. This recommendation is based on community feedback.

Content Navigation

  • As we fine-tune content organization of the new Business and Finance website, we looked for guidance from stakeholders on what community members may struggle with while navigating content on the OBFS website.
  • Individual meetings are scheduled with units to review content organization and navigation.
  • The navigation on the B&F Website will be reimagined and based on topics founded in business community’s tasks. It will not be based on the responsible units, like it is today. Instead of seeing “UAFR” or “UPAY” in the navigation, you will see topics such as “University Financials”, “Buying and Contracts“, “Paying People”, etc. This is based on the community’s feedback, following extensive user testing and validation process.

July 2023 Meeting Notes

We continue to meet with units to review and analyze existing web content as well as fine tune the navigation. Also, by reviewing all policies we have the opportunity to look for “non-policy content” that may be better housed elsewhere. We remain on track to launch the new website before the end of the calendar year.

New Features

We are spending time working on Forms, FAQs, and Who to Ask sections. The hope is to consolidate content and research ways to make it easily searchable. As time allows, we will need to analyze all forms and FAQs. The new News Center will be an exciting update and we look forward to sharing more with you.

Testing

Testing results for proposed information architecture show we are on track for the majority of the website with slight adjustments.

We value your input and thank you for your continued commitment and engagement with the OBFS Website Redesign Project. If you have questions, please contact Derek Briles (Project Management) or Filip Przybysz (Change Management) at sharedservices@uillinois.edu.

Next Meetings

Resources

Current Meeting

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Contact

If you have questions, please contact Derek Briles (Project Management) or Filip Przybysz (Change Management) at sharedservices@uillinois.edu.

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